After weeks of maneuvering and strategizing, it appears the end of the road is near for the conservative House Republicans who have sought to use a government funding measure to put severe limits on Obamacare.
And the painful truth is they have not gotten anything close to the
Obamacare restrictions they sought, and there's no chance they will in
the current battle.They haven't repealed Obamacare, haven't defunded it, haven't delayed it for a year, haven't delayed the individual mandate, haven't delayed the penalty for the individual mandate -- in other words, they haven't accomplished any of the goals they embraced at the beginning of the continuing resolution fight. Even after a partial shutdown of the government, now in its third week, all of the group's goals remain elusive.
Instead, they are being asked to agree to weak measures that will not fundamentally change Obamacare. The Senate is considering a measure to force the Obama administration to actually verify that Obamacare subsidy recipients are actually qualified to receive those subsidies, but even that provision is weaker than many Republicans prefer. The Senate is also considering the repeal of a tax that unions have found burdensome, but that is a Democratic goal that House GOP conservatives don't seem to care about.
Then there is the medical device tax. Of course the conservatives oppose it and would like to see it gone. But from the beginning of the fight, they have dismissed medical device repeal as a small measure that would mostly affect the makers of the devices, and not the millions of Americans who will face higher premiums, higher deductibles, fewer hours on the job and other burdens from Obamacare. The conservatives set out to do something big to help those millions; repealing the medical device tax isn't that thing.
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